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This Is What Rolling Blackouts Look Like From Space Extreme winter weather hit Texas hard this February. An air mass from the arctic extended deep into the United States from Canada, with disastrous results for the ordinarily warm state. Along with snow and unusually low temperatures, the state’s capacity for power generation was significantly reduced by weather-related equipment failures. Images hosted by NASA’s Earth Observatory show the effect of controlled, rolling blackouts across the Greater Houston Area.  One image, taken on February 7th, shows Houston before the arctic weather system, and another picture taken on the 16th shows large swaths of the city in darkness.Read More →

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Perseverance Seen From Space by ESA’s ExoMars Orbiter A little over a week ago (February 18th, 2021), NASA’s Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero crater on the surface of Mars. In what was truly a media circus, people from all over the world tuned to watch the live coverage of the rover landing. When Perseverance touched down, it wasn’t just the mission controllers at NASA who triumphantly jumped to their feet to cheer and applaud. In the days that followed, the world was treated to all kinds of media that showed the surface of Mars and the descent. The most recent comes from the TraceRead More →

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ESA is Working on a Mission to Explore Caves on the Moon Infrastructure is going to be one of the biggest components of any permanent human settlement on the moon.  NASA Artemis missions are focused directly on building up the facilities and processes necessary to support a moon base.  ESA is also contributing both material and knowledge.  Most recently they made another step in their path to explore some lava tubes and caves in the subterranean lunar world. ESA recently started the third round of a series of studies that focus on exploring lunar caves.  The current round, called a Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) studyRead More →

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Parker Solar Probe Captured Images of Venus on its way to the Sun Last summer, the Parker Solar Probe flew past Venus on its way to fly closer to the Sun. In a bit of a surprise, one of the spacecraft’s cameras, the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR, captured a striking image of the planet’s nightside from 7,693 miles (12380 km) away. The surprise of the image was that WISPR – a visible light camera – seemingly captured the Venus’ surface in infrared light. Mission scientists expected WISPR to capture Venus’ thick, carbon dioxide clouds, which normally block views of the surface.Read More →

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A Review of “Extraterrestrial” by Prof. Avi Loeb On October 19th, 2017, astronomers from the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar object in our Solar System. In honor of the observatory that first spotted it, this object (designated 1I/2017 U1) was officially named ‘Oumuamua by the IAU – a Hawaiian term loosely translated as “Scout” (or, “a messenger from afar arriving first.”) Multiple follow-up observations were made as ‘Oumuamua left our Solar System and countless research studies resulted. For the most part, these studies addressed the mystery of what ‘Oumuamua truly was: a comet, an asteroid, or something else entirely?Read More →

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Dust Particles in the Martian Atmosphere can Create Static Electricity, but not Enough to Endanger the Rovers Lightning is one of the most powerful forces in nature.  Up to 1 billion volts of electricity can flow into a strike in less than a second.  Such a large energy buildup can be created by even a relatively simple cause – two particles rubbing together.  A team at the University of Oregon has now studied whether those simple interactions might cause lightning on a place it hasn’t been seen before – on Mars. The simple answer to that question is that yes, there will be some “lightning”Read More →

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Did Ancient Martian Life Eat Rocks For Food? Some lucky astronomers get to work with some of the rarest material in the world.  Real Martian meteorites are extraordinarily rare, but are invaluable in terms of understanding Martian geology. Now, one of the most famous meteorites, nicknamed “Black Beauty”, is helping shed light on a much more speculative area of science: Martian biology. Formally known as Northwest Africa 7034, Black Beauty is one of the most visually stunning of all Martian meteorites.  It is composed of a type of volcanic breccia, which is a set of rock fragments that coalesced together into a fine-grained pattern.  ResearchersRead More →

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Some Earth Life Could Already Survive on Mars Mars’ surface is a harsh environment for life.  But life on Earth is notoriously resilient as well.  No one is quite sure yet how microbes from Earth would fare on the Martian surface.  However, the impact of a potential transmigration of microbes to the red planet could be immense.  Not only could it skew any findings of potential real Martian life we might find, it could also completely disrupt any nascent biosphere that Mars might have.   To understand whether that much disruption is really possible, first we must understand whether any Earthly life can survive on MarsRead More →

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Nested sampling with any prior you like. (arXiv:2102.12478v1 [astro-ph.IM]) <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Alsing_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">Justin Alsing</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Handley_W/0/1/0/all/0/1">Will Handley</a> Nested sampling is an important tool for conducting Bayesian analysis in Astronomy and other fields, both for sampling complicated posterior distributions for parameter inference, and for computing marginal likelihoods for model comparison. One technical obstacle to using nested sampling in practice is the requirement that prior distributions be provided in the form of bijective transformations from the unit hyper-cube to the target prior density. For many applications – particularly when using the posterior from one experiment as the prior for another – such a transformation is not readily available. InRead More →

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Observation of the $alpha$ Carinid meteor shower 2020 unexpected outburst. (arXiv:2102.13043v1 [astro-ph.EP]) <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Bruzzone_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">Juan Sebastian Bruzzone</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Weryk_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">Robert Weryk</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Janches_D/0/1/0/all/0/1">Diego Janches</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Baumann_C/0/1/0/all/0/1">Carsten Baumann</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Stober_G/0/1/0/all/0/1">Gunter Stober</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Hormaechea_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">Jose Luis Hormaechea</a> We present observations of the sudden outburst of the $alpha$ Carinid meteor shower recorded with the Southern Argentina Agile MEteor Radar-Orbital System (SAAMER-OS) near the South Toroidal sporadic region. The outburst peaked between 21 UT and 22 UT on October 14, 2020 and lasted 7 days $(199^{circ}leqlambda_{odot}leq 205^{circ})$ with a mean Sun-centered geocentric ecliptic radiant of $lambda_{g}-lambda_{odot}=271^{circ}.04$, $beta_{g}=-76^{circ}.4$, and a geocentric speed of 33.3 km s$^{-1}$. Assuming a mass index value of $s=2.0$,Read More →

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ASASSN-18am/SN 2018gk : An overluminous Type IIb supernova from a massive progenitor. (arXiv:2007.00008v2 [astro-ph.HE] UPDATED) <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Bose_S/0/1/0/all/0/1">Subhash Bose</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Dong_S/0/1/0/all/0/1">Subo Dong</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Kochanek_C/0/1/0/all/0/1">C. S. Kochanek</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Stritzinger_M/0/1/0/all/0/1">M. D. Stritzinger</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Ashall_C/0/1/0/all/0/1">Chris Ashall</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Benetti_S/0/1/0/all/0/1">Stefano Benetti</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Falco_E/0/1/0/all/0/1">E. Falco</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Filippenko_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">Alexei V. Filippenko</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Pastorello_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">Andrea Pastorello</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Prieto_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">Jose L. Prieto</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Somero_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">Auni Somero</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Sukhbold_T/0/1/0/all/0/1">Tuguldur Sukhbold</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Zhang_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">Junbo Zhang</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Auchettl_K/0/1/0/all/0/1">Katie Auchettl</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Brink_T/0/1/0/all/0/1">Thomas G. Brink</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Brown_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">J. S. Brown</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Chen_P/0/1/0/all/0/1">Ping Chen</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Fiore_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">A. Fiore</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Grupe_D/0/1/0/all/0/1">Dirk Grupe</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Holoien_T/0/1/0/all/0/1">T. W. -S. Holoien</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Lundqvist_P/0/1/0/all/0/1">Peter Lundqvist</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Mattila_S/0/1/0/all/0/1">Seppo Mattila</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Mutel_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">Robert Mutel</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Pooley_D/0/1/0/all/0/1">David Pooley</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Post_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">R. S. Post</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Reddy_N/0/1/0/all/0/1">N. Reddy</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Reynolds_T/0/1/0/all/0/1">Thomas M.Read More →

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Two-timescale evolution of extreme-mass-ratio inspirals: waveform generation scheme for quasicircular orbits in Schwarzschild spacetime. (arXiv:2006.11263v3 [gr-qc] UPDATED) <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/gr-qc/1/au:+Miller_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">Jeremy Miller</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/gr-qc/1/au:+Pound_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">Adam Pound</a> Extreme-mass-ratio inspirals, in which a stellar-mass compact object spirals into a supermassive black hole in a galactic core, are expected to be key sources for LISA. Modelling these systems with sufficient accuracy for LISA science requires going to second (or {em post-adiabatic}) order in gravitational self-force theory. Here we present a practical two-timescale framework for achieving this and generating post-adiabatic waveforms. The framework comprises a set of frequency-domain field equations that apply on the fast, orbital timescale, together with a set ofRead More →

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Mass accretion rate of clusters of galaxies: CIRS and HeCS. (arXiv:2005.11562v2 [astro-ph.CO] UPDATED) <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Pizzardo_M/0/1/0/all/0/1">M. Pizzardo</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Gioia_S/0/1/0/all/0/1">S. Di Gioia</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Diaferio_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">A. Diaferio</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Boni_C/0/1/0/all/0/1">C. De Boni</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Serra_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">A. L. Serra</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Geller_M/0/1/0/all/0/1">M. J. Geller</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Sohn_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">J. Sohn</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Rines_K/0/1/0/all/0/1">K. Rines</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Baldi_M/0/1/0/all/0/1">M. Baldi</a> We use a new spherical accretion recipe tested on N-body simulations to measure the observed mass accretion rate (MAR) of 129 clusters in the Cluster Infall Regions in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (CIRS) and in the Hectospec Cluster Survey (HeCS). The observed clusters cover the redshift range of $0.01<z<0.30$ and the mass range of $sim 10^{14}-10^{15}h^{-1}$~M$_odot$. Based on three-dimensional massRead More →

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In: arXiv

Short-range correlations effects on the deformability of neutron stars. (arXiv:2003.04471v2 [nucl-th] UPDATED) <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/nucl-th/1/au:+Souza_L/0/1/0/all/0/1">Lucas A. Souza</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/nucl-th/1/au:+Dutra_M/0/1/0/all/0/1">Mariana Dutra</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/nucl-th/1/au:+Lenzi_C/0/1/0/all/0/1">C&#xe9;sar H. Lenzi</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/nucl-th/1/au:+Lourenco_O/0/1/0/all/0/1">Odilon Louren&#xe7;o</a> In the present work, we investigate the effects of short-range correlations (SRC) on the dimensionless deformability of the binary neutron system related to the GW170817 event. We implemented phenomenological SRC in a relativistic mean-field model in which the bulk parameters, namely, incompressibility ($K_0$), effective nucleon mass ratio ($m^*$), symmetry energy ($J$) and its slope ($J_0$), are independently controlled. Our results point out that the SRC favor the model to pass through the constraints, established by the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration, onRead More →

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In: arXiv

Radial Distributions of Coronal Electron Temperatures: specificities of the DYN model. (arXiv:2002.07495v3 [astro-ph.SR] UPDATED) <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Lemaire_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">Joseph F. Lemaire</a> (1 and 2), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Katsiyannis_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">Athanassios C. Katsiyannis</a> (3) ((1) Universite Catholique de Louvain, (2) Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, (3) Royal Observatory of Belgium) This paper is a follow up of the article where Lemaire and Stegen (2016) introduced their DYN method to calculate coronal temperature profiles from given radial distributions of the coronal and solar wind (SW) electron densities. Several such temperature profiles are calculated and presented corresponding to a set of given empirical density models derived from eclipse observations and in-situ measurements of theRead More →

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Detection of Spectral Variations of Anomalous Microwave Emission with QUIJOTE and C-BASS. (arXiv:2001.07159v2 [astro-ph.GA] UPDATED) <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Cepeda_Arroita_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">R. Cepeda-Arroita</a> (1), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Harper_S/0/1/0/all/0/1">S. Harper</a> (1), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Dickinson_C/0/1/0/all/0/1">C. Dickinson</a> (1, 2), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Rubino_Martin_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">J. A. Rubi&#xf1;o-Mart&#xed;n</a> (3, 4), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Genova_Santos_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">R. T. G&#xe9;nova-Santos</a> (3, 4), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Taylor_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">Angela C. Taylor</a> (5), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Pearson_T/0/1/0/all/0/1">T. J. Pearson</a> (2), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Ashdown_M/0/1/0/all/0/1">M. Ashdown</a> (6, 7), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Barr_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">A. Barr</a> (1), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Barreiro_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">R. B. Barreiro</a> (8), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Casaponsa_B/0/1/0/all/0/1">B. Casaponsa</a> (8), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Casas_F/0/1/0/all/0/1">F. J. Casas</a> (8), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Chiang_H/0/1/0/all/0/1">H. C. Chiang</a> (9, 10), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Fernandez_Cobos_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">R. Fernandez-Cobos</a> (8), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Grumitt_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">R. D. P. Grumitt</a> (5), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Guidi_F/0/1/0/all/0/1">F. Guidi</a> (3, 4), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Heilgendorff_H/0/1/0/all/0/1">H. M. Heilgendorff</a> (10), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Herranz_D/0/1/0/all/0/1">D. Herranz</a> (8), <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Jew_L/0/1/0/all/0/1">L.Read More →

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Sound velocity in dense stellar matter with strangeness and compact stars. (arXiv:1906.00826v3 [nucl-th] UPDATED) <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/nucl-th/1/au:+Xia_C/0/1/0/all/0/1">Chengjun Xia</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/nucl-th/1/au:+Zhu_Z/0/1/0/all/0/1">Zhenyu Zhu</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/nucl-th/1/au:+Zhou_X/0/1/0/all/0/1">Xia Zhou</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/nucl-th/1/au:+Li_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">Ang Li</a> The phase state of dense matter in the intermediate density range ($sim$1-10 times the nuclear saturation density) is both intriguing and unclear and could have important observable effects in the present gravitational wave era of neutron stars. As the matter density increases in compact stars, the sound velocity is expected to approach the conformal limit ($c_s/c=1/sqrt{3}$) at high densities and should also fulfill the causality limit ($c_s/c<1$). However, its detailed behavior remains a hot topic of debate. It wasRead More →

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Astronomers Think They’ve Found the Neutron Star Remnant Left Behind from Supernova 1987A It was the brightest supernova in nearly 400 years when it lit the skies of the southern hemisphere in February 1987. Supernova 1987A – the explosion of a blue supergiant star in the nearby mini-galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud – amazed the astronomical community. It offered them an unprecedented opportunity to observe an exploding star in real-time with modern instruments and telescopes. But something was missing. After the supernova faded, astronomers expected to find a neutron star (a hyper-dense, collapsed stellar core, made largely of neutrons) left-over at the heartRead More →

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One Type of Fast Radio Bursts… Solved? Every now and then there is a burst of radio light in the sky. It lasts for just milliseconds before fading. It’s known as a Fast Radio Burst (FRB), and they are difficult to observe and study. We know they are powerful bursts of energy, but we aren’t entirely sure what causes them. The more we’ve learned about FRBs, the stranger they appear. Most occur outside our galaxy, but there are a few that seem to originate within the Milky Way. Most seem to appear at random in the sky, but a few of them are repeating FRBs.Read More →

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The GRANTECAN discovers the largest cluster of galaxies known in the early universe A study, led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and carried out with OSIRIS, an instrument on the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), has found the most densely populated galaxy cluster in formation in the primitive universe. The researchers predict that this structure, which is at a distance of 12.5 billion light years from us, will have evolved becoming a cluster similar to that of Virgo, a neighbor of the Local Group of galaxies to which the Milky Way belongs. The study is published in the specialized journal MonthlyRead More →